The All New Iain Dale's Diary ... Er, Why?

27 Dec 2012 at 19:03

“You’re like a dog returning to its own vomit,” said a friend when I told her I was going to restart my blog. Charming. But yes, after a two year interlude, I am indeed returning to writing my own blog and winding up Dale & Co. Let me explain.

When I announced, back in December 2010, that I was stopping blogging, people seemed to miss the fact that I said I wasn’t ruling out a return to it when the time was right. At the time I had just been taken on by LBC and there just didn’t seem to be enough hours in the day. The blog began to suffer. I’d usually write 5-8 pieces a day, but it wasn’t just about being prolific, I just wasn’t enjoying it. I knew that if I continued by just writing an occasional blog, my readers wouldn’t like it, so I decided the best course of action was to stop altogether.

Six months later I started Dale & Co, a multi-authored site, on which I would write something as and when I felt like it. But in all honesty, Dale & Co never really took off. It only ever seemed to get much traction when I wrote an article myself, and that wasn’t very often. It actually had a lot of talented contributors and several of them took on a loyal following, but I never really enjoyed running the site. So a couple of months ago I decided to shut it down and go back to my individual blog.

Who knows whether I will enjoy blogging again. I know I won’t be as prolific as I was before. I suspect the range of things I will write about will be different. My life is different, with different priorities. I certainly won’t be watching traffic levels as much as I used to, if at all. I’m going to do this my way, in the hope that people will like it.

In terms of commenting, you must log in through your Facebook or Twitter account. I’m not allowing anonymous comments at all. If you haven’t got one, it’ll take you 5 minutes to create one.

You will notice a feature which alerts you to when I am on air on LBC and enables you to listen live, via the blog. We’ll also be having guest posts from one or two of the more popular contributors to Dale & Co.

We’ll be adding a few features over the next few weeks. I am sure you won’t be backward in coming forward in suggesting things you think I ought to add, or write about, or indeed tell me what you don’t like.

Welcome back too. I look forward to seeing how you merge your LBC stuff with other things on this blog: it already looks like a model site for this type of thing.
Two bugs - "Privicy policy" (in your footer) is slightly mis-spelt; and if you log in using a different Twitter or Facebook account (maybe you're using a shared computer) there's no way to log out or change account, unless I missed something.

I think Dale & Co would probably have worked better with a tighter political focus and maybe a smaller number of contributors writing about particular subject fields, but it was worth a go. Good luck with the new blog.

Welcome back - as someone who really enjoyed your original blog I had high hopes for Dale & Co and was sorry that these weren't fulfilled. I look forward to the new blog - hopefully with the same sharp focus and insight of the original!

Sorry it's taken a while to start commenting on your new blog - it's been a turbulent time recently. I really like the new look, feel and functionality. Russell has done a great job again.

For what it's worth I think you're doing a good thing starting this blog up again. Even in this world where Twitter and Facebook is the dominant means of expression there is still space for lengthier thoughts and opinions. I've missed yours and couldn't get into Dale and Co in the same way.

My life and world is much smaller but busier these days, so I am counting on you to short-cut me through all of the Westminster bullshit.